Florida: Rick Scott Plans To Resume Voter Purge Effort In Florida | Reuters

Florida Governor Rick Scott is planning a new effort to purge non-U.S. citizens from the state’s voter rolls, a move that last year prompted a series of legal challenges and claims from critics his administration was trying to intimidate minority voters. Voter protection groups identified a number of errors in the state’s attempt to identify people who are not American citizens on Florida’s voter lists months ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November 2012. The search also sparked several lawsuits, including one by the U.S. Justice Department, which claimed the effort violated federal law since it was conducted less than 90 days before the election. “We were recently informed that the State plans to continue their efforts to remove non-citizens from Florida’s voter rolls,” Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley said in a statement.

Florida: Governor to launch new purge of Florida voter rolls | Bradenton Herald

Gov. Rick Scott will soon launch a new hunt for noncitizens on Florida’s voter rolls, a move that’s sure to provoke new cries of a voter “purge” as Scott ramps up his own re-election effort. Similar searches a year ago were rife with errors, found few ineligible voters and led to lawsuits by advocacy groups that said it disproportionately targeted Hispanics, Haitians and other minority groups. Those searches were handled clumsily and angered county election supervisors, who lost confidence in the state’s list of names. “It was sloppy, it was slapdash and it was inaccurate,” said Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards. “They were sending us names of people to remove because they were born in Puerto Rico. It was disgusting.”

National: Obama vows fight on voting rights | Washington Times

President Obama told a gathering of civil rights leaders at the White House on Monday that his administration is committed to restoring legal protections for minority voting, and a Florida legislator who attended the meeting said his colleagues are motivated by the knowledge that slain black Florida teen Trayvon Martin would have been eligible to vote next year. The president and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. assured the group that they will work on a legislative response to the Supreme Court’s decision in June that struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, a key section that the administration said was needed to combat discrimination in targeted states and districts. That provision required states with a history of voting discrimination to submit any changes on election law to the Justice Department for approval.

Editorials: Voting Rights Of Black Americans Trampled By ‘New Jim Crow,’ Civil Rights Advocates Say | Huffington Post

By most standards, Desmonde Meade is an overachiever. The 46-year-old is a fourth-year law student at Florida International University. He made the 2013 dean’s list. And he’s about to start working as a regional coordinator for a national anti-violence organization. But, barring some unforeseen policy change, he won’t ever get the chance to practice law in his state. And this promising, African-American law student isn’t allowed to vote. Nearly two decades ago, after a struggle with drugs and alcohol led to a series of run-ins with the law, Meade served three years in prison. In 2005, he checked himself into a substance abuse program and stopped using drugs. Yet, because of a policy adopted by Florida Gov. Rick Scott in 2011, he is prohibited not only from voting, but also from serving on a jury and becoming a member of the Florida bar. “I was in prison because I had an addiction to drugs and alcohol,” he said. “Should I be ostracized for the rest of my life because I fell victim to the grip of addiction? No. Should I pay the price for any crimes I committed? Yes, I should pay the price. But once I serve my time, I’m still an American.”

Florida: Democrat says Scott not pursuing voter registration fraud linked to GOP | Tampa Bay Times

Is Gov. Rick Scott covering up GOP voter registration fraud? The future leader of the House Democrats thinks perhaps he is and is asking Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford to hold legislative hearings on what he says could be an attempt by Scott to “stifle” a criminal investigation. “I have been following the many news media reports about rampant fraud regarding voter registration drives associated with the company Strategic Allied Consulting and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation that was tasked by Gov. Rick Scott some months ago,” states a letter that Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, sent out Tuesday afternoon.

Florida: State asks federal court to dismiss voting rights suit | Bradenton Herald

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act last month, it cleared the way for Gov. Rick Scott’s administration to resume its controversial effort to remove potential noncitizens from voter rolls. The high court June 25 invalidated a formula used for decades by federal officials to approve changes to voting laws in states and counties to protect minorities from discrimination, a review known as preclearance. The federal scrutiny no longer applies to Monroe and four other Florida counties: Hillsborough, Collier, Hardee and Hendry. A Hispanic advocacy group, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, sued last year on behalf of two Tampa voters, calling the state’s list of suspected non-U.S. citizen voters unreliable with a potential to disenfranchise voters, especially Hispanics and African-Americans such as Murat Limage, 45, of Tampa. He received a letter from the county elections office that questioned his citizenship, even though he was a naturalized U.S. citizen, the suit alleges. Some county election supervisors also questioned the accuracy of the state data. Removal efforts stalled a few weeks before the 2012 general election.

National: States promise quick action after court voting ruling | ABC

Across the South, Republicans are working to take advantage of a new political landscape after a divided U.S. Supreme Court freed all or part of 15 states, many of them in the old Confederacy, from having to ask Washington’s permission before changing election procedures in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination. After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday, officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot. North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia’s most populous county likely will use county commission districts that Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local Democrats.

Florida: Election Reform In Florida: Is The Conversation Over? | WFSU

Governor Rick Scott has signed Florida’s new elections reform bill into law, but will that solve the problems that arose during last year’s Presidential election? Some say yes, but others say there’s more work to do stop long lines at the polls and protect the state from further embarrassment. Last year, Florida encountered a lot of problems during the 2012 presidential election from counting delays to long lines at the polls. “You shouldn’t have to wait four or five days after the election to know who won the electoral votes from the state of Florida. We shouldn’t be yellow when everyone else is red or blue. We should be able to get that right. You shouldn’t have to wait for six hours to vote,” said House Speaker Will Weatherford following a Work Plan Tour in Tampa.

Florida: Florida Enacts Election Law to Ease Long Voter Lines | Governing.org

Gov. Rick Scott has finished the fix of the flawed election law that relegated Florida to a late-night joke in 2012 by signing an elections clean-up bill passed on the final day of the legislative session. The measure, signed by Scott late Monday before he left for a trade mission to Chile, reverses several provisions implemented in 2011 by GOP lawmakers in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election. Those changes, criticized by Democrats as an attempt to suppress votes for President Barack Obama, limited the early voting that the president’s campaign capitalized on in 2008. The 2011 law also prevented early voting on the Sunday before Election Day and prohibited voters, particularly students, from changing their voting address at the polls. Scott, who had previously signed the 2011 bill into law and refused to use his executive powers to extend early voting in 2012 despite numerous requests, acknowledged the system needed a fix.

Florida: Gov. Rick Scott signs elections bill to fix long voter lines | Miami Herald

Gov. Rick Scott has finished the fix of the flawed election law that relegated Florida to a late-night joke in 2012 by signing an elections clean-up bill passed on the final day of the legislative session. The measure, signed by Scott late Monday before he left for a trade mission to Chile, reverses several provisions implemented in 2011 by GOP lawmakers in anticipation of the 2012 presidential election. Those changes, criticized by Democrats as an attempt to suppress votes for President Barack Obama, limited the early voting that the president’s campaign capitalized on in 2008. The 2011 law also prevented early voting on the Sunday before Election Day and prohibited voters, particularly students, from changing their voting address at the polls.

Florida: No. 1 in barring ex-prisoners from voting | Action News

Florida leads the nation by a wide margin in the number of felons who have served their sentences but cannot vote. One of only 11 states in the U.S. that does not automatically return civil rights to former inmates, Florida had not restored the rights of 1.3 million former inmates as of 2010, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit that favors alternatives to incarceration. The next closest state was Virginia at 351,943. A policy introduced by Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi makes most former convicts wait years before they can apply to restore their rights, which include serving on a jury and holding public office. Critics say the policy disproportionately affects minorities — 60 percent of Florida’s prison population — and cost thousands the ability to vote in 2012. But Scott and Bondi say felons must demonstrate a crime-free life after prison before regaining their civil rights.

Florida: Local election officials applaud election law changes | Northwest Florida Daily News

Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux is tickled that the Florida Legislature voted this year to give him and his peers across the state flexibility in establishing early voting hours. He’s also flabbergasted it took a decade to do so. “I’m very pleased, finally. We’ve only been asking for flexibility for about the last 10 years,” Lux said. Two years ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that cut the number of early voting days from 14 to eight, a move that led to long lines and waits at polling places in many areas.

Florida: Lawmakers Approve Overhaul of State’s Problem-Ridden Voting Process | New York Times

Six months after Florida became the butt of late-night jokes for a chaotic voting process that bedeviled the 2012 presidential election, the State Legislature passed a bill on Friday to remedy many of those problems. Gov. Rick Scott and Republican lawmakers made overhauling the election system a priority this year. Their push to change the law — a redo on a much-criticized bill passed in 2011 — was a response to waits of hours by voters in several counties and a flawed early voting program.

Florida: Groups Object to Restrictions in Elections Bill | South Florida Times

Several groups on Monday criticized language in an elections bill that they say would make it more difficult for some minority, disabled and elderly voters to cast ballots. A provision in the wide-ranging bill wouldn’t allow voters to use assistants to cast ballots if they didn’t previously know them. Also, nobody could assist more than 10 voters per election. That means that people who can’t read English, are blind, have a disability or have trouble voting for any other reason wouldn’t be able to ask for help from trained volunteers at the polls unless they already know them. “This is again not about what’s best for Florida’s elections, but it’s politicians getting in the way of solutions for democracy,” said Gihan Perera, executive director of Florida New Majority, a group that advocates for minorities.

Florida: Florida Senate Passes Bill That Could Expand Early Voting | NBC

The Senate passed an elections bill Wednesday that would let elections supervisors expand early voting days and sites in an effort to avoid the long lines that left Florida open to criticism last November. The bill, in part, would undo some of the changes the Republican-led Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott made to elections laws two years ago, when they cut early voting days from 14 to eight days and prohibited voting on the Sunday before Election Day. It passed 26-13. The bill (HB 7013) would require at least eight days of early voting, but would leave it up to elections officials if they wanted to have as many as 14 days, including the Sunday before Election Day when many black churches have organized “souls to the polls” voter drives.

Florida: Most Former Felons Not Given Back Civil Rights | South Florida Times

Changes under Republican Gov. Rick Scott are making it more difficult for Florida’s former felons to get their voting rights restored, which critics say has suppressed the minority vote and hurt Democratic candidates. As one of his first actions after taking office in 2011, Scott, as chairman of the Florida Board of Executive Clemency, undid automatic restoration of voting rights for nonviolent ex-offenders that previous Gov. Charlie Crist helped adopt in 2007. Since then, the number of former felons who have had their voting rights restored has slowed to a trickle, even compared with the year before Crist and the clemency board helped make the process easier.

Florida: Browning on election bill provisions: “bad public policy” | Palm Beach Post

Former Secretary of State Kurt Browning called a provision included in the Senate’s election package yesterday allowing the secretary of state to dock election supervisors pay and essentially put them on probation “bad public policy.” Browning served more than two decades as the Pasco County supervisor of elections before going to work for Gov. Charlie Crist as secretary of state in 2006. Browning stepped down from the post for the second time last year and was elected Pasco County schools superintendent in November. Browning was in the Capitol on Wednesday for school superintendents’ meeting with his one-time boss, Gov. Rick Scott.

Editorials: The entire U.S. voting process is flawed | Wendy Weiser/The Denver Post

Can congressional Democrats and Republicans put aside partisan politics to seriously address the major issues facing our country? With the debt crisis ever looming and judicial and executive nominees languishing, there is plenty of opportunity for partisan rancor. But there is one area where politics should be — and, surprisingly, may be able to be — tossed aside: voting. In 2011 and 2012, we saw a wave of states pass restrictive laws that would have made it harder for millions of eligible Americans to vote. Citizens and voting advocates mounted a massive effort to push back and ensure everyone could have their say at the ballot box. In state after state, courtroom after courtroom, the most serious efforts to restrict the vote were rolled back and voters won. Now, there are signs of a sea change: Politicians are pulling back from efforts to rig the system before they even get signed into law.

Florida: Florida leads in denying ex-felons voting rights | Miami Herald

Changes under Republican Gov. Rick Scott are making it more difficult for Florida’s former felons to get their voting rights restored, which critics say has suppressed the minority vote and hurt Democratic candidates. As one of his first actions after taking office in 2011, Scott, as chairman of the Florida Board of Executive Clemency, undid automatic restoration of voting rights for nonviolent ex-offenders that previous Gov. Charlie Crist helped adopt in 2007. Since then, the number of former felons who have had their voting rights restored has slowed to a trickle, even compared with the year before Crist and the clemency board helped make the process easier. Civil liberties activists say Florida’s rights restoration rules are the most restrictive in the nation and have the effect, if not the intent, of suppressing the minority vote. A disproportionate number of black Floridians are convicted felons – 16.5 percent of Floridians are black, yet black inmates make up 31.5 percent of the state’s prison population – meaning a higher percentage of African-Americans don’t have the right to vote after completing their sentences. And black voters tend to support Democrats. Exit polls show only one in 10 supported Scott in the 2010 election.

Florida: Elections bills set for Senate debate | The Florida Current

Gov. Rick Scott’s opposition to raising the $500 cap on political contributions to candidates will probably sink campaign-finance reform for the 2013 session, the Senate sponsor of a new elections package said Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee cleared the two biggest political bills of the year for floor action, voting along party lines for a bill intended to fix the long lines and balloting problems that haunted Florida’s elections in November and approving a plan to abolish the shadowy “committees of continuous existence” that candidates can use as political slush funds. But each bill picked up potentially troublesome provisions that will be hard to work out in the final three weeks of the session. Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, sponsored both bills. In March, the House OK’d a finance package raising the $500 cap on contributions to $5,000 per donor in statewide races and Supreme Court retention votes, and $3,000 for district and county races. The Senate bill initially proposed a $3,000 cap but the Rules Committee adopted an amendment lowering the maximum to $500 in all races — the same as it is now. The governor said recently he opposes raising the limit, which was set in 1992.

Editorials: Obama’s unneeded election commission | South Florida Sun Sentinel

Of all the things that deserve the federal government’s focus right now, the last is the reform of election laws. Yes, it’s shameful that 102-year-old Desiline Victor of Miami faced a six-hour-long line when she showed up to vote last November. Indeed, as many as 201,000 frustrated Floridians left the polls before voting that day, according to an analysis by an Ohio State researcher for the Orlando Sentinel. So on election night, President Obama was right to say “we have to fix that.” But during his State of the Union address, at which Victor was an invited guest, the president was wrong to suggest a federal fix for standardizing how elections are held across the country. A one-size-fits-all formula is not the most effective and efficient way to manage elections from Miami, which experienced long lines, to Milton in Florida’s Panhandle, which did not.

Florida: Federal election commission may take back seat to Florida reforms | OrlandoSentinel.com

Voting problems are nothing new. But as President Barack Obama showed Tuesday night, so are proposed solutions. In announcing his plan to create a new commission to “fix” long voting lines, Obama was mirroring similar efforts that followed the razor-thin — and infamously controversial — 2000 election. But unlike that response – Congress created the Election Assistance Commission that over the next decade doled out more than $3.2 billion to help states buy voting equipment, recruit poll workers and improve record keeping – the Obama White House has yet to say much about who’ll be named to the new commission or what they’ll be asked to do. Meanwhile, the 2002 commission is foundering, virtually inactive and unfunded. “There is nothing they are doing that is sufficient enough to justify their existence,” said U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., a longtime critic. “It’s the perfect example of what [former president] Ronald Reagan said — that the closest thing to eternal life on this Earth was a government program.” That may leave Florida voters, tens of thousands of whom waited up to seven hours to vote on Nov. 6, waiting to see if the lines they faced will become a serious federal issue or just more political fodder. At this point, it seems far more likely that the first response will come from the Florida Legislature.

Editorials: Obama Says We Need to Fix Voting Lines. But How? | ProPublica

At tonight’s State of the Union address, Michelle Obama will be joined by 102-year-old Desiline Victor, who, like many in Florida and elsewhere, waited hours to vote on Election Day. “By the way,” Obama said in his election speech. “We have to fix that.” But how to fix it remains unclear. Though new research on states’ performance in the November election reveals long lines kept thousands from voting, there’s still much we don’t know about what would best speed up the process. Victor’s home state of Florida had the longest average wait timeof any state at 45 minutes. Victor waited for three hours. Other Floridians reported standing in line for up to 7 hours. Not every voter had Victor’s stamina: Professor Theodore Allen at Ohio State University estimated that long lines in Florida deterred at least 201,000 people, using a formula based on voter turnout data and poll closing time. The number only includes people discouraged by the wait at their specific polling site, and not those who stayed home due to “the general inconvenience of election day.” The real number, Allen says, is likely much higher. One study also showed that black and Hispanic voters nationwide waited longer on average than white voters.

Florida: League of Women Voters Wants More Election Changes than Proposed | Sunshine State News

Election reforms proposed by Secretary of State Ken Detzner are an “encouraging” first step, the League of Women Voters of Florida announced Wednesday while putting a number of their own suggestions before legislators. “The League of Women Voters of Florida does not believe that the secretary’s recommendations alone are sufficient to enable Florida to move past the problems that have plagued our democratic process and which were clearly apparent in the most recent general election,” wrote League President Deirdre Macnab to Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, who chairs the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

Florida: GOP proposal: Give Gov. Scott power to remove county election supervisors if problems arise | Palm Beach Post

Targeting five counties that saw the worst problems during the 2012 elections, Florida legislators are considering giving Gov. Rick Scott and his administration broader power to remove elections supervisors or put them on probation. Some critics say the move is an attempt to scapegoat supervisors for long lines caused mainly by legislators, who shortened early voting and lengthened the ballot with 11 proposed constitutional amendments. The proposal came from Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a Miami Republican who sponsored the 2011 election bill (HB 1355), signed into law by Scott, that critics say made voting more arduous last year. Diaz de la Portilla’s latest measure would require supervisors to issue reports to the Florida secretary of state three months before an election, attesting to their readiness.

Florida: Panel of Both Major Parties Propose Voting Fixes For Upcoming Legislative Session | TheLedger.com

Leaders in both major political parties agree changes must be made to Florida’s election laws, but they are far apart on how to fix the problems and who’s to blame for issues that arose in the 2012 election. A panel of Republicans and Democrats from the Legislature and from county supervisor of elections offices agreed this week that there must be longer periods for early voting and shorter amendments on ballots. They also said proposed fixes will be offered in the upcoming 2013 session of the Florida Legislature, which starts March 5. The panel was part of a pre-legislative seminar sponsored by The Associated Press, and while there was agreement that more days and more locations are needed for early voting, there was no agreement on who necessitated those changes.

National: Why the GOP’s electoral vote gambit won’t work | Washington Post

A Republican-backed plan to change the way certain states allocate electoral votes has fizzled as quickly as it sprung onto the national consciousness. The slate of upcoming 2014 governor’s races is a major reason why that happened. Last month, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus voiced some support for the effort to award electoral votes in a handful of battleground states by congressional district. Since many of those congressional districts lean Republican, the plan, if passed in several swing states, would give future GOP presidential nominees a leg up. But for the Republican governors in these states, endorsing the idea — which Democrats can easily cast as a partisan power grab — would carry immense political risk on the eve of reelection campaigns that already promise to be challenging. So, the governors have mostly distanced themselves from such proposals.

Florida: Report on Long Lines, Other Election Problems May Miss Deadline | Sunshine State News

County elections supervisors may have to wait another week before they find out how the state’s top election official viewed their handling of the 2012 election. The anticipated findings and recommendations that will be the product of a review by officials from the Division of Elections, including a tour by Secretary of State Ken Detzner of the county supervisor offices deemed the most troubled, may not be ready until after Detzner’s Feb. 1 deadline, a spokesman for Detzner stated. “It is not completed yet, but I think it’s likely to be finished by sometime next week,” Detzner’s spokesman, Chris Cate, replied in an email on Monday. Detzner’s report, called for by Gov. Rick Scott, is also expected to focus on changes that need to be made, particularly at the Central and South Florida counties, where much of the media attention was focused on long, slow lines and delayed results.

Editorials: Election Law: Voting Done Right | NewsChief.com

Whatever his motivations, Gov. Rick Scott deserves praise for his about-face on state election law. Scott said last week that local election supervisors should be allowed to offer as many as 14 days of early voting during the next election and increase the number of voting hours. He signed a bill last year that cut the number of days to eight from 14 and reduced the number of hours. The governor also reversed course by calling for early voting to be allowed to resume on the Sunday before Election Day. Black churches brought voters to the polls on that Sunday — an effort dubbed “souls to the polls” — before the bill signed by Scott ended that effort.

Florida: Voters weigh in on Governor’s early voting flip | www.wokv.com

Governor Rick Scott says he wants to look at reforming early voting laws to allow for more days, hours, and shorter ballots.  This comes just a couple years after he signed into law the very bill that cut down early voting days and hours. We spoke to African-American voters at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast on Friday and everyone said they were at the very least glad Governor Scott is going to review the early voting laws, but not everyone was convinced he’s doing it for the right reasons. “It’s not surprising.  I mean, in politics you have people that flip-flop back and forth all the time.  It’s just when they need a vote, who’s going to support them in what they need to say at the moment is honestly how I feel…it’s unfortunate that all this happened at such a time where we needed early voting.